I'm hit and miss with plants, but I am trying to learn. This is my second year in this apartment and the first time I've had a proper plant-growing environment. It's all containers, on a roof-deck, but still, what with the large barrels and built-in beds, it's a feasibly complex growing environment.

I just wish it wasn't the vine that was doing so badly - that's the only plant I feel I'm babysitting on the landlady's behalf, and doing a lousy job of it.

When I was young, my family had a long row of bushes which became aphid-infected. We mail-ordered ladybugs. I remember putting the refridgerated bugs out on the leaves of the plants, and watching them gradually warm up and move.

There's only one honeysuckle plant, and its had enough troubles in the past several years that it has yet to trellis very far out of reach, so ordering that many ladybugs seems excessive. I wonder how small the quantity of ladybugs one can order it? Still, if first spray, and then sudsy water won't do it, ladybugs are the next step.

I'll try that, if the spray doesn't seem to have worked in another day or so. This honeysuckle seems to have enough issues without adding aphids to the mix.

I'm very glad they haven't investigated the rose bush yet.

Yes, and yes. But as of these past few days, no ladybugs have done me the courtesy of coming to snack on all the free aphids, and I already owned the poison spray from last year. If there are still aphids in a few more days, and it hasn't rained, I can wash off the plant and then buy ladybugs - I don't want to poison them.

I'm also wondering if I can buy few enough ladybugs to bother with it. It's only one large plant (and one tiny one) I'm trying to save.

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Make the vacuum cleaners go away! They're tormenting me! You would think the stacks of a library would be a quiet place to work but no. Last week it was librarian tour groups, now it's the vacuum cleaner which is so loud I can't hear my radio over it.